SOURCE: Russell, Henry M. W. “Late to the Vineyard: Explaining Malcom Muggeridge.” The Christian Century 113, no. 19 (5-12 June 1996): 624-29.

In the following essay, Russell argues that Muggeridge did not give up his skeptical objectivity in converting to Catholicism.

Malcolm Muggeridge was aware that to account for his conversion to Christianity, many people might look for a “sinister explanation, expatiating upon how old lechers when they become impotent are notoriously liable to denounce lechery, seeking to deprive others of pleasures no longer within their reach; how a clown whose act has staled will look around for some gimmick, however grotesque and unconvincing, to draw attention to himself.” Though Richard Ingrams knows that Muggeridge wrestled with religion at least since his Cambridge days (he writes that “the mistake his attackers made was to think that Malcolm had only come to Christianity in old age, when in fact it had been...